To:A. A. JOFFE

Published:First published in 1959 inLenin Miscellany XXXVI.

      Sent to Berlin.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1975,

      Moscow,Volume 44,

      page112.Translated:Clemens DuttTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

1. VII. 1918

DearComrade Joffe,

Iam, to tell the truth, extremely angry with you. We are
short-handed, everyone is devilishly overworked, yet you
go and do a thing like this: you write a lot onbusiness
mattersin apersonalletter to me (the last one, in
pencil) and insert a number ofpersonalthrusts, attacks,
pinpricks and so on against Chicherin (“not a real”
m-r[1]and so on). To Chicherin, on the other hand, you write:
“prospects in the letter to Lenin”.

Damnit, it’s the frozen limit!

Chicherin,naturally, asks me for the letter, and I can’t
show it, because I don’t want to be an instrument of
squabble. The result is that the work suffers and relations suffer.

Chicherinis a splendid worker, most conscientious,
shrewd, knowledgeable. Such people should be highly
appreciated. That his failing is lack of “commandership”
does not matter. There are plenty of people in this world
who have the opposite failing!

Chicherinis a man you can work with, he is easy to work
with, but the work can be spoiled even with him.

Youfind fault with him, but the Commissariat for
Foreign Affairs has a right to complain of you, too, because
you do not reckon with him, andwithoutthe knowledge
and permission of the People’s Commissar for Foreign
Affairs, ambassadors are not, of course, entitled to take
decisive steps.

Ihope you will take all measures to eliminate these
Mißstände.[2]

Thatyou have got Krasin “on the move” is very good.
Keep on at Shklovsky with all your might; he is a
lazybones; demand reports and more reports, use threats.

Allthe best,Lenin

[1]Apparently“minister”.—Ed.

[2]Shortcomings.—Ed.